Almost Twelve...

I was supposed to work only 11.5 hours today and almost got out on time! Today was conferences all day so I worked on my repairs most of the morning. Did some laminating, teacher posters and book covers. Got some books back out on the shelves. Printed up my last two book orders so I could check them out against what actually comes and what I need to reorder. Put away all the books on the cart. Checked in all the books brought back today (a whole bin full) and put them away. I usually listen to some music during conferences because the library is usually pretty quiet, but I had some audio books that students had told me didn’t work. So I put in a new battery and started last night to listen to ‘Al Capone Does My Shirts’, then did ‘Wrinkle in Time’ today read by Madeleine L’Engle!! Finished that one and went on to ‘Fairest’ by Gail Carson Levine. I just had them low in the background, but the first two played great and so far on ‘Fairest’ all is well to chapter 20. Took money up to the bookkeeper so it’s in the safe over the break. Packed up the book fair. Bought the books I took out of the book fair with my Scholastic $$. I think I had about the lowest book fair ever, which says a lot about our population and how that shift is occurring. But I did some great sales today, so ended up about $1,700. Not bad. I’ll get about another $600 to buy books for the library. Glad today is over, see you on the other side of April!

12 Hour Day

A regular school day for the students, but we had conferences tonight as well.  So I was in at 7:30 this morning and out at 7:30 tonight. Tomorrow I get to leave at 7! Yeah! Back to school today! I had two book talks, I did for Ms. R on Peak by Roland Smith (I just saw today he’s got a new Peak novel coming out!!), The Thief by Margaret Whalen Turner (our OBOB book!), The Honest Truth by Dan Gemeinhart, Outcasts United and Wrinkle in Time. The students were way too interested in the book fair. I don’t think any of them checked out the books I talked! I also had Mr. A’s math classes in today. They were working on a game using cards and they were really into it! He had four classes in. I also had a meeting with two of my OBOB students in. After school I put up some Book Fair signs and then worked on book repairs. I had to make some decisions on whether to repair, or to get rid of a book. Sometimes it’s hard to decide to surplus a book, but some are old, have been repaired many times and time for them to go. As much as I love repairing, I just don’t have the time anymore. Made about $300 in the book fair today, lots of parents came in to buy for their kids. One of my favorite students came in with her mom and we’ve had many meetings over book fairs and sad that this is her last one. Glad to see her one last time! 11.5 hours to go tomorrow and then spring break! Huzzah!

Notices!

Was going to print them up yesterday before I left and totally forgot to! So I got in this morning, put in my announcement for the book fair and then cranked out the notices. Not too bad! 219 of them! So I put them on half sheets and cut them, then had my aides sort them into rooms and I worked on the students that hadn’t had their rooms inputted in. We got them all done and delivered 1st period! Yeah aides! I thought I had book talks today, so I picked out books, got them ready, then realized the talks are for tomorrow! So at least I’m ready for tomorrow then! I sent off books today. Thirty Phantom Tollbooths went out and nine of my Any Small Goodness. I worked on deleting old trashed emails. Got in the Golden Snitch that one student wanted. She wasn’t here today, but hopefully tomorrow! Sold more in the book fair, but thinking that I won’t make my goal, or even our usual amount. But we’ll see. Tomorrow is my 12 hour day with conferences at the end of the day. So hopefully parents will help beef up those numbers!

Five Talked, Six Gone!

What a great day for a book talk! I talked five books all of them flew out of there and I luckily had a second copy of one that another student wanted! A very good day! Talked on Flygirl by Sherri Smith, Whirligig by Paul Fleischman (that was the one that had two copies!), You’re Welcome Universe by Whitney Gardner, The Force Doth Awaken by Ian Doescher, and Geekerella by Ashley Poston! I had put that one on the announcements for the book fair and we had a copy, so I threw it out there. Did some repairs, a bit of the Book Fair. Helped with the poster machine. Took a big deposit up to the bookkeeper and we counted it together. Eleven dollars worth of rolled pennies (just had to count the rolls! Thank goodness!) and $35 worth of quarters, not in rolls! It was nearly $400 all together so more than time to turn it in! Getting geared up for Wednesday (a twelve hour day) and Thursday (an 11.5 hour day). Hanging on in there! Talked to a teacher about a student, one of my former aides who would like to keep on the A lunch Battle of the Books team, but he has B lunch, so that would mean that his teacher would have to give him permission to miss half of class once a week. So we talked it over and if he turns in his homework, he can come! ;) So we’ll see if he decides turning in homework is worth it! 

Meh

Yeah, just kind of a quiet meh day. Had pretty steady book fair sales all day. Was pretty quiet more or less in the library. Did some book repairs. Was pretty boring actually. I did do some reading on the job since I have book talks on Monday. One for 8th graders, two for 6th graders. Cleaned up a lot. Checked in and out books. Just a meh day, for a Friday. Not much excitement going on.

One Golden Snitch

Today was pretty normal in the library. We had a few students in here and there working on projects, but for the most part, quiet. I had reading groups come in and check out their group books. Some came from another school and I thought, ‘hey! I’ll just put in a request for each kid that checks out a book then the other school can just approve it and we’ll be good to go!’ Yeah, that totally didn’t happen! So I ended up putting notes on their accounts of which book and barcode they checked out and then sending all that to the school that sent me the books. This time though, I also kept the list so I could have it when they all come back. Book Fair did pretty good today. Lots of books got put away since we couldn’t yesterday with the Paramedics in. Got all my aides’ book reviews graded, well, not graded, but commented on so I can return them tomorrow. Got them all printed up and in our reviews binder. Got our hours for next week. We work two long day and a half days and get Friday off, so we had to turn in our intentions for that. Talked to Scholastic and they are not picking up the fair until after we come back from spring break, yeah! I was thinking they’d be there on Thursday sometime, but no! We’ll be able to keep the fair open for the whole conference times. And a Golden Snitch is on its way here. One of our students really wanted one for her sibling for their birthday and the warehouse found one and is sending it. She was so excited today when I let her know!

Compressions to Lady GaGa

Yes, the firefighter paramedics were in today teaching our 8th graders CPR. We had them in 5 of the 7 periods and they had a great time making sure our kids knew the rules! Did you know that you no longer have to breathe for the victim?? I didn’t! To do the compressions they played a Lady GaGa song that was about 120 beats per minute. I must admit I didn’t know the song but the word ‘dance’ was in there! Made some more $$ on the Book Fair, another $150! Way more than what I thought we did. Cleaned up scattered books. Almost got all the student aide reviews done. I reset all the tables this afternoon and cleaned them so we’re back to our ADA required spaces. Put new tape down so they’d be easy to put back next time. A great day and I think the students learned enough to keep someone alive until help can arrive. A wonderful way to give back to the community on all accounts!

$200.74

That was my first day of the book fair! I don’t think I’ve ever had an opening day that big before! So here’s hoping that every day is that good and more! I put the signs out this morning, in the rain of course! I also did pictures of some things that I wasn’t sure if they’d be safe out there. And it worked! All in all, a great Scholastic Day! Had three classes come down and get books for book groups today and we set up a cart for another class to go up to the classroom. I put away all my non-fiction books and my fiction as well. Helped some students get their books done. I had five missing aides today! That’s nearly half my aides gone! So made the work load a little more for my aides that were in, and more for me when I had no aides! Had A lunch in and we had groups of 7 at a time and they got 3 minutes to look around, then the next group came in. Ms. V helped out and it was great to have her in there and help me out! Did some laminating today. Last book fair for our 8th graders. One in particular I will be sad to see go!

Clifford’s Truck is Here!

Which means of course that the Scholastic Book Fair has arrived! I pulled into the parking lot this morning to see the truck already pulled up by the office! So I stopped by the driver, let him know I was here then scooted downstairs to help him get everything together and in! I spent most of the day getting the fair set up since the library was closed due to the last Peer Mentor training day we had today. I also sent off about 6 book requests. I also had to put up the posters! I really like it when I put on extra titles of books so picked books from the fair and got book cover images printed up and put three other titles on each poster (about 7 of them!). Let the office know to put it on the Leslie web page too! Had technology come in and pick up all the extra projectors and bulbs I had in the closet. Probably about 20 bulbs and 4 projectors. My closet feels so empty! But better the bulbs get used than just sit in the closet. After work, off to the bank to get change money for the fair starting tomorrow!

Half Day

Did my half day of inservice today, Helping Tramatized Children Learn. Again, very good. We discussed the video Trauma Remembered. Really good.

Send Them Back

A teacher that had brought in a lot of books from other schools today brought a lot of them back, so I had to shift and sort through them to make sure they were getting to where they needed to go, whether they were in textbooks to be transferred back or not. Or library books that I needed to check in or back to the school they came from to be checked in. It was quite the production of the day. I also worked on the MakerSpace stuff I got from the class I attended and laminated all the workbooks today and cut them all out since another teacher wanted to use the laminator and it was on already. I had totally forgotten to write the page numbers on the pages!! Drats! Will have to do that. Got nine more of my book reviews in from my students. One I got yesterday, and two students were gone today. Glad to see they finally got around to it. Changed the display by the doors. New books from my cart, so I put up light green plastic tablecloths, then up behind the back books like a hill and then some flowers for spring. Not bad, not my best, but the books will get out there now! Helped a class with finding group read books today as well. 

World War I

Today I did two book talks on four of our World War I books. I had students check out three of them. I didn’t talk much about them, just let the books speak for themselves. That made me very happy. They need to read, they need to remember. They need to hear the voices that are now silent, when they were not silent. We are lucky we have the books to hear them. I cleaned out files today. I had brought in some of the files from my mom, and replaced the khaki greenish ones with her pretty blue, green, yellow and red ones. I took the ones I piled on my desk and took them upstairs for others to use. I threw out a ton of manuals. We had multiple manuals for things like projectors (we no longer have), ten of the same manual for one type of projector. Things like that. Old books lists from before I was there, and more of the like. Most of them I had never even looked at for the last four years, so time to purge. Took the laminated covers and recovered all the books. That took awhile. I did about 15 books. Had to do a copy status and many were ‘out for repairs’ so I had to go in and change that. Had two incidents this morning. One was a student who had three books checked out and she walked through the gates and they went off. So, I had her come back in. She had just turned in two books not checked in yet, and still had one. So I looked her up and she had NO books checked out to her. Then another student had four books in his fines. His mom was there and she said that she and he were pretty sure he had turned all in but one, and sure enough, I hunted them down on the shelves and we found three of them. I was so embarrassed on both accounts. So I talked to all my aides today about making sure that we check books out, and we make sure they get checked in. Had my Battle of the Books students in today. I have three great students for A lunch, but only one showed up for B lunch and said one of the other students said he wasn’t going to come anymore. So that made the decision easy for me that our team is on the A lunch. They did a great job on the questions today and I’m hoping they hang on until the end! One more day of the first six weeks. Out of my twelve aides I only have one, yes one, books review. Not too happy about that. I won’t fail them, but I may have to put a note that there is work they needed to do, but chose not to. Makes me sad. I’ve never had that happen before. :(    

Love the Groups!

Today we had in two classes of students trying to narrow down a group read selection. The teacher had given me the titles and I put them all in seven boxes, one for each table in the library. So the groups came in, went through their box (only 2 or 3 titles in a box) then the boxes shifted so they all got to see each book. It was pretty cool! We had four other classes come in and look at books, checking in/out. Then six classes coming in to swap out math books. So we were pretty much hopping in the library all day! Which I absolutely love! Put some of the repair books back out on the shelves today. Also laminated book covers that had worn out barcodes (had made new barcodes and spine labels for those that needed it) and picked about lamination or covers. I think I did about 15 of them. So those will go on the books tomorrow and those will head out to the shelves. Love my job!

Peer Repair

Today the library was all about the Peer Mentor Training. We had these amazing students in the library all day learning how to support other students who need a helping hand. I spent most of the day working on repairs. Making those decisions on whether or not to keep a book as well. I did about a box and a half of repairs and will be looking at the rest next Monday when they come back. Lots of tape and gluing! Found out my order was taken out of the wrong account, sad face. So, people are trying to get that taken care of, but it might not happen. Sad face. 

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

I got in and put in an announcement right away about it being Dr. Seuss' day! I stood in the hallway reading out Dr. Seuss books during passing all day. Played a video of Green Eggs and Ham along with The Sneetches today during our lunch times. It was fun to see the students come in, look, get hooked and sit and watch the videos. Made me smile! I worked some more on my Titlewave list today and added in 52 country books at $23 each and went way, I mean way over budget! I have about $1,100 left to go and the quote was around $3,000! All right, time to delete books! Then my favorite librarian was at a conference and started sending me texts with 'do you have this? be sure you order this!' so I looked them over and added some regular fiction books! I ended up at about $1,300. Might have to add a few more in because there are always books that they are out of or are not published yet, so we'll see! Enjoyed most of the day and ready for the weekend! Goodnight!

Student Returned!

My order for PermaBound got submitted today and I was doing my Happy Dance, clicking my heels up in the air and happy to get in new books! We also got a notice to start wrapping up our ordering for the year so I worked on that a lot today with Titlewave. I picked up some books from old lists that I never got. Found some really cool new books that I may or may not get depending on when the order goes in since some are not quite available yet, even though they are on the catalogue. Had some really nice interactions with students today looking for books. Had two boys that were looking for a specific book that we were all out of, so we poked around, looked up lists and I found them two books that they were happy to get and be able to read right away and we also put a hold on the books they wanted. Changed out my Black History month book timeline to Dr. Seuss since it is Read Across America tomorrow! I have my whole counter covered with most of the Dr. Seuss books I have. Tomorrow I will put out other books as well out on the tables for the day. Should be fun! Laminated today and got our new Library Aide passes done. I had one of my students make us up new ones (the two we had left were here when I first came nearly four years ago, they were getting pretty ragged!). And they look really nice. Helped Mr. M with the set up for the presentation of how Salem is answering the safety question and what we are doing about it. I hope there are many people who will come. And more good news! A student returned my mini USB! I was so proud of him! There are reasons why, but I told his teacher about it and she was impressed as well. So happy days! I used some of my very strong, sticky fiber tape to make taking it a bit more difficult should someone else try it!